SLATER SIGNALS The Newsletter of the USS SLATER's Volunteers By Timothy C. Rizzuto, Executive Director

Destroyer Escort Historical Museum USS Slater DE-766 PO Box 1926 Albany, NY 12201-1926 Phone (518) 431 -1943 Vol. 22 No. 6, June 2019

This month started with our annual Historic Ships Radio Weekend. Joe Breyer, Stan Levandowski, and Mike Wyles kept us in the game again this year. They all missed Jerry Jones’ wit, as Jerry was recovering from heart surgery. They almost made the 15 stations We couldn’t get along without this gang. Shanna’s tour required for a certificate. But guides are always ready to handle the big group tours. mainly they had fun, and it was great to get the crew back together. The only regrets they had was the fact that Jerry couldn’t make it, and the TBL wouldn’t cooperate, due to problems with the motor generator. They worked “The Voice of the Pacific” KPH under lousy propagations. They also worked eight ships, USS Edson, USS North Carolina, USS Hornet, USS Massachusetts, USS Nautilus, USS New Jersey, USS Wisconsin, and USS Silversides. Their work also involved three museums and ten ham stations. It was great to see the radio room come back to life.

The vacuum tubes had hardly cooled off when Ed Zajkowski arrived to get this fourth Limerick work party organized. On Sunday June 2, fourteen volunteers arrived on board to focus on welding repair jobs. Ed’s team is built around welders from the old Ed Zajkowski put together a team that spent a very productive three days aboard. Electric Company’s Limerick Nuclear Power station, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The crew was Ed Zajkowski, Rick Espenshade, Joe Zygmont, Bob Lalley, and the father and son team of Ed and Cole Schlegle. Others helping out were Tin Can Sailors Steve Whynot and Gene Byers, volunteers Kendrick Giambattista and Bill Maloney, and regulars Ron Prest and The father and son team of Thomas Scian. Blair Sandri and Phil Zieglin Ed and Cole Schlegle cooked for the crew and did a great job. They replacing a section of wasted worked, slept, and ate aboard the ship. metal.

The weather was perfect for them. They took on 33 individual jobs, mostly metal fabrication and replacement. They finished the work they started last spring by installing the last two 20mm foot rails. In addition, they replaced three wasted 40mm shell chutes, welded up the new bullhorn bracket that will go up on the mast, replaced a section of wasted Replacement of a wasted 40mm gun deckhouse bulkhead, reworked two spent cartridge chute. stanchions, replaced the wasted decking on gun 42, and welded gussets on the davit guy extensions on the whaleboat davits. Then they got of all the new work covered with two coats of primer. It should be noted that this was the first workweek that Ed Zajkowski did not vow, “never again,” so we hope to see them back in the spring.

Ed had a reflective moment when he met Willard Hornbeck, an elderly 93- year-old gentleman visiting the ship with his wife. Willard is a World War II veteran that can still get around. He had served in USS CROSS DE-448. Ed spent some time giving Willard the red carpet treatment. He wanted to see his general quarters station in after steering. The visit reaffirmed Ed’s commitment to USS SLATER.

When the dust settled, our regulars took their ship back, and it was a month of completions. Dave Wasson finished the welding in the sonar shack, to keep that from leaking into the pilot house. His next project will be replacing wasted metal from the forward splinter Danny Statile has become our number shield on one fabricator, seen here making wave gun 31. guide brackets for the mast. Dave Mardon, Earl Herchenroder, and Gary Sheedy got the CIC exhaust vent on the flying bridge back together and running. Danny Statile completed Dave Mardon putting the finishing the welding repairs to the aft engineroom touches at the end of the flying supply vent bridge project. intake, and the adjacent tank vent pipe. He went on to working for Barry Witte, doing welding on the bullhorn mount, and fabricating brackets for the surface search radar antenna waveguide that will be installed on the mast. Guy Huse got the telescopes mounted on gun 33, completing repairs to the sight The sight assembly on gun number assembly. His next project will be trying to three is all back together. get a MK 14 electronic gun sight operational. Doug Tanner is battling cranky gun mounts again. Shanna reported that the gun 31 was getting sluggish in train again, so Doug and Earl got into the gear box. They repacked a couple bad bearings with grease, in the hope that the gun will continue to be trainable for the rest of the tourist season. Doug is removing the two bearings in the train hand wheels on gun 32, and will take them down to the bearing store to find replacements to match them. Then it’s on to gun 33, to figure out why that gun jammed in train. After that, Doug plans to rebuild the forward supply vent intake on the starboard side of the forward superstructure. An investigation revealed a lot of wasted metal there. Thomas Scian painted Epoxy topcoat on all the new work aft of the break water, so for the first time in months, maybe years, there is no red primer showing aft of the break water. Tommy Moore has the whaleboat ready to go into the water. And thanks to the effort of Bill Holt, Warren Brozio, Bill Wetterau, and Earl Herchenroder, we got the whole Thanks to Thomas Scian, there is no fo’c’s’le chipped to bare metal and painted. We would have completed all of the deck red primer showing aft of the painting up there, but Mother Nature had other breakwater. plans, and we got a lot of rain this month. In between the rain, we were still very busy with tours. We’ve had school groups from Hoosick Falls and Green Meadow Elementary. In addition, we’ve had overnights with the Albany Cub Scout Pack 98 and Canadian Cub Scouts from Chambly, Quebec. With Albany being the closest major airport to Cooperstown, NY, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and many youth tournaments over the summer, we get a lot of baseball families aboard the ship. We are grateful that they We hosted a special tour for the make time to visit us in between their travels! summer interns at The Bonadio This month the Summer Camp groups are also Group, our auditing firm. starting to book tours. We want to congratulate our Sunday Duty Officer and current Tour Guide Wall of Fame Champion, Evan. He was hired as a high school U.S. History teacher at Coxsackie Athens High School this month. We know he’ll be a great educator! We have again held on to our top spot on TripAdvisor’s “Things to do in Albany” list. Thanks to some great comments like these. “John E. was a great tour guide! The tour was interactive and informative. He engaged the kids and let them explore, wear helmets, lay on the bunks. We are a history living family and this was a great tour.” Lisa S. left this comment after attending our DE Our resident artist, Vic Consiglio, did a Day ceremony, “Following the moving beautiful job restoring the photo-op ceremony, we took a tour of the ship. The lifering. volunteers that give the tours and maintain the ship are incredible. Charles, our tour guide, was both knowledgeable and informative. It was fascinating to tour the ship with many of the original fixtures in place. The history of the vessel was amazing. At the end of the tour, we met Bill (Boats) who is a 90-year- young maintenance volunteer. He provided us with stories of the ship and its sailors.” Sadly, we have the passing of another former volunteer to report this month. Glenn Harrison was one of our most dependable tour guides for over ten years. He was a regular on Wednesdays, and was known for doing animated and entertaining tours. He also worked youth group overnight encampments, and was always on hand for the years when we manned a table at the Altamont Fair. He helped organize the Honor a Vet ceremony for the late Paul Czesak, and was responsible for restoring our line throwing gun. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with bone and brain cancer that ended his life. He will be missed by all of Glenn Harrison us who were his shipmates. We held our 22nd DE Day Commemoration on the third Saturday in June. We appreciated the participation of Gold Star Mother, Reverend Charlene Robbins, who did the invocation and benediction. Sailors from NPTU Ballston Spa served as our color guard. The event was well-attended, with this year’s dignitaries including Congressman Paul Tonko, Albany County We had an excellent turnout of public Executive Dan McCoy, officials for our DE Day Commemoration. Assemblymembers Pat Fahy and Phil Steck, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, and Albany Treasurer Darius Shahinfar. Our Chairman, BJ Costello, emceed the event, with Trustees Alan Fox reading the names of the ships lost in action. Ray Smith, whose father served in USS FECHTELER, and Marianne Donovan, whose father was lost with USS SAMUEL B ROBERTS, were among those who dropped a carnation into the river for each of the fifteen escorts lost in action.

Trustee Steve Long gave the history of DE Day. This event was inaugurated by Dr. Martin Davis, of the Destroyer Escort Sailors Association, and was first celebrated at the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum in , on June 16, 1990. On DE Day, we pay homage to the Destroyer Escort sailors killed in World War II, Korea, , and the Cold War years. We estimate that over 150,000 men served on destroyer escorts during World War II and through the . Initially, the event was celebrated by the over thirty DESA Chapters around the country. But with the passing of time, and the loss of members, fewer and fewer chapters can muster enough members to commemorate the event. Consequently, we are exploring the option of streaming the ceremony live on our Facebook web page, so that those who can’t At the end of the month, we hosted attend can still be part of it. We anticipate that the Coast Guard cutter SHRIKE for an the date will be commemorated aboard USS overnight visit. SLATER as long as she remains a memorial to those who served.

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See you next month!